The Boston Celtic Music Festival turns 15 and keeps growing

Wednesday

Jan 10, 2018 at 10:00 AM

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

In celebration of its 15th anniversary, the Boston Celtic Music Festival is shaking things up in the best way possible: It’s expanding. Previous presentations of the annual event, which has a permanent home at Club Passim in Cambridge, have taken place over a two-day period. This time it’s stretching to four, beginning on Thursday, Jan. 18, and running through Sunday, Jan. 21, and though Club Passim remains BCM Central, some shows will be at other locations, too.

The brainchild of Boston-based friends Scottish fiddler Laura Cortese and Irish flutist Shannon Heaton, the festival has been a hit all these years because, according to Cortese, speaking by phone while on vacation in Ghent, Belgium, “New England has an incredible wealth of traditional folk music. We’ve got a great New England fiddle scene of contra dance music, we have an incredible Irish scene, and incredible Scottish and Cape Breton scenes. All of these are going on throughout New England.

“Over ice cream one day in Davis Square, Shannon and I were thinking that with so many great insular scenes simultaneously having such a vibrant experience, wouldn’t it be cool if we had this one time of the year where we all came together to play,” she added. “We wanted to get a showcase of all these different bands who were playing their favorite part of it.”

But Cortese, who sings and plays violin (and sometimes cello and double bass) and fronts the folk-influenced band Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards – their new album is “California Calling” – doesn’t come from a Celtic music background. Growing up in San Francisco, where her hippie parents got her listening to their record collection that ranged from Otis Redding to Elvis Presley, Cortese picked an instrument to play in elementary school.

“I chose violin because that’s what my grandmother played,” she said. “In school we would play easy pieces like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ then I went to fiddle camp, then played in my middle school orchestra, and then enjoyed fiddle camp much more.”

As do so many others, Cortese refers to her instrument as a violin when she was playing “Twinkle” and uncomplicated classical pieces in elementary and middle school, but calls it a fiddle when talking about her camp days and beyond.

“After my first exposure to fiddle music, I bought Alasdair Frasier’s album ‘The Driven Bow,’ which is still my favorite of his albums,” she said. “That was really the first time I listened to fiddle music.”

In college, she played and sang in a traditional string band with another West Coast fiddler, Hanneke Cassel, who eventually came East to go to Berklee College of Music, and sent back so much positive news about the place, Cortese eventually followed her there.

“Not being a classical player, not having taken private lessons, and not having studied jazz, it was really the only place I could study fiddle,” she said. “It was hard to be so passionate about music, and find a place where you could continue to get better if you had that kind of commitment.”

During her time at Berklee, and continually since then, Cortese has been a regular part of the local acoustic scene. Of her new album with the Dance Cards, she said, “As a band, we have pop influences and indie rock influences. We’re coming at it from this folk angle, but sonically it’s definitely more indie folk or indie pop rather than trad folk.”

Though the band won’t be performing at this year’s gathering, Cortese will be, in a couple of different musical settings: as part of the Boston Urban Ceilidh Dance and, along with a few friends, at a late-night Passim show.

“We’re spreading it out this year,” she said, regarding the new direction in programming. “We’re adding a Thursday night concert of emerging artists at Club Passim. On Friday it’ll be pretty much the same as we’ve had in the past: The Roots & Branches concert at Club Passim, and the Boston Urban Ceilidh Dance, just down the street at the Atrium. On Saturday, we’ll be doing one of our bigger changes. We used to be in multiple places on Saturday, but this time we decided to do one long day of music, all at Club Passim. I’ll be one of the acts doing a late-night set there, where I’ll play my 2015 instrumental album ‘All in Always.’ My friends playing with me will be Valerie Thompson on cello, and Conor Hearn on guitar. And I think Nick Garris will be joining us to do some dancing.

“On Sunday,” she added, “we’ll go back to the vibe of multiple venues, with a Dayfest at both Club Passim and the Sinclair, and a Finale concert at the Sinclair.”

The Boston Celtic Music Festival, presented by Club Passim, runs from Jan. 18-21 at three locations in Cambridge: Club Passim, 47 Palmer St.; the Sinclair, 52 Church St.; and the Atrium, 50 Church St. For tickets and a complete list of performers and times, visit www.clubpassim.org or call 617-492-7679.